Pictures of Yesterday
It's times like these that Brainy wishes he were organic enough to get drunk.
He's paging through ancient twenty-first century news clippings, in the relative privacy of his quarters, and he can't even pretend that it's research anymore. Fuck, no. Now it's just masochism. Because every day he's slipping further from reality, and he knows it has to be checked somehow, since he's not sure he has the power to stop it altogether. Every single day he lets this little fantasy grow out of control he runs the risk of altering the time stream, or earning the disgust of his friends, or, or, or killing himself a little bit more.
He hardly knows who he is anymore. This pathetic little infatuation he has—it hurts. Hurts like no android is supposed to. He lifts a hand to the screen, covering half the image with his palm. He removes it again immediately, ashamed with himself. Lois Lane smiles from the space his hand had been. Brainy's chest clenches as the man in blue resumes gazing soulfully at Lois instead of Brainy's fingers.
This is his future.
Clark and Lois. Clark and Lois. Clark and Lois. The images scroll past Brainy's eyes at a faster rate than any human could keep up with. Finally Brainy shuts off the device and slumps back in his chair. Superman's future was already set in stone, literally almost one thousand years ago, and there's nothing Brainy is allowed to do about it. Hells, there's nothing he should want to do about it.
But he does, and desperately. He lights up like a monitor screen every time Superman so much as speaks to him. He's torn with jealousy when another legionnaire steals his attention. He keeps tabs on where he is and what he's doing at every moment. And, in the deep of night, he can't help the images that run through his computer of a mind. It's humiliating, the fantasies he seems to harbor. And so he clenches his eyes and tingles as ghost fingers and a wisp of freezing breath trail down his chest.
Perhaps this is the reason he allows the fantasies to play out, more or less unchecked. He knows—logically, he knows—nothing can come of them, ever. Clark Kent is promised to another time, another person. Not to the thirty-first century.
And certainly not to Brainiac 5.